Canada’s Trudeau Shifts Policy To The Left Amid A Covid Pandemic

Now he’s shifting his agenda into high gear, marking one of the biggest left-wing moves in Canadian federal politics since the mid-1960s, say political analysts and historians, when the then-liberal government introduced universal health care and a national retirement plan. .

“We can choose to embrace bold new solutions to the challenges we face and refuse to be held back by old ways of thinking,” said Mr. Trudeau in August, when he first started making promises about a wider social safety net and a more aggressive environment policy. “This is our chance to build a more resilient Canada.”

He appointed a new Treasury Secretary, Chrystia Freeland – who led the Canadian negotiations with the Trump administration on a renewed North American free trade pact – to oversee the development of this new policy route.

Polls show that voters – shaken by the effects of the pandemic – need an interventionist government with a lot of money.

“Canadians feel very insecure right now,” said David Coletto, chief executive at Abacus Data, an Ottawa-based polling station. “There was already a prevailing view – both right and left – that those with access to resources fared much better than those who struggled to survive. That was only confirmed in the past year. “

Other analysts say Mr. Trudeau’s pressure could get a boost from the Biden administration, given the US president’s similar agenda focused on the environment and social programs. Mr. Trudeau was the first world leader to call Mr. Biden when he moved into the Oval Office.

President Biden and Mr. Trudeau “clearly have a shared vision,” said Stewart Perst, a professor of politics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. “They can also reinforce each other, especially on the world stage.” Certainly there will be differences and setbacks, such as President Biden’s decision to halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline expansion.

The Trudeau administration spent aggressively to mitigate the pandemic’s blow, with Canada’s fiscal balance deteriorating most in 2020 on an adjusted basis among major developed and emerging economies. The deficit is on track and will reach a record 18% of gross domestic product in the fiscal year ending March 31. Most of the cash went to households and businesses.

Mr Trudeau has said there will be more government incentives, about 5% of gross domestic product, to jump-start recovery and build and expand a social safety net targeting additional daycare centers , better care for the elderly, and a national plan to help subsidize drug costs.

“We’re not just aiming to get back to where we were before Covid-19,” Ms. Freeland, who is also a Deputy Prime Minister, told reporters last week. “The pandemic has exposed critical gaps in our social safety net. And the virus has hit certain sectors, certain groups of people harder than others – seniors, women, low-paid workers, youth, people of color, indigenous peoples. “

But the push is also a concern. Robert Asselin, a former senior assistant in the Trudeau administration, points out that the cost pushes the budget deficit to half a trillion Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $ 390 billion, and said the government has no focus on generating of longer-term economic growth. .

“I find that a bit disturbing. It’s mainly about the redistribution of wealth, ”said Mr. Asselin, now senior vice president at the Business Council of Canada, a lobby group representing the country’s chief executives. The approach taken by the upcoming Biden government, in comparison, also shifts the policy agenda to the left, but has detailed strategies to fuel growth in certain sectors of the economy, he said.

One of the duties that Mr Trudeau has delegated to Treasury Secretary Freeland, according to a letter from Mr Trudeau’s office setting out her mandate, is to introduce new taxes targeting “extreme wealth”. Prior to politics, Ms. Freeland was a journalist and wrote a book about the world’s wealthy elite and income inequality.

The Trudeau government’s measures come at a time of heightened expectation that Mr. Trudeau will pursue elections as early as the spring, to take advantage of solid public support for his response to the pandemic and to try to trade his minority government for a majority mandate.

Mr. Trudeau returned to power with a minority mandate in the fall of 2019, punished in part for a scandal over his office’s role in trying to intervene in the prosecution of a Montreal-based engineering company. While Canadian electoral laws state that the next vote is set in October 2023, the Prime Minister has the power to dissolve parliament and run elections at his request.

Mr. Trudeau’s calculation that Canadians want more government seems to be paying off. Polls from Abacus Data and other public opinion companies generally show that Mr Trudeau’s liberals have a stable lead over their closest rival, the Conservative Party, as most Canadians approve of his government’s response to fighting the pandemic.

The Liberal Party of Canada has been the dominant force in Canadian politics throughout the country’s 150-year history, in part because of its ability to gauge public mood and shift the policy agenda as needed, political analysts say. For example, in the 1990s, liberals largely ruled from the right, as they cut government programs to solve budget problems and cut taxes to ward off conservative opponents.

Kathy Brock, a political scientist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, said Mr Trudeau’s shift to the left – which also includes more aggressive measures to combat climate change, such as a proposed sharp increase in the carbon tax – is intended to help progressive voters to convince those parking their votes at the left-wing New Democratic Party or elsewhere. In the last federal election, in 2019, about one-third of voters voted for progressive parties, while two-thirds voted for liberal or conservative parties.

Mr. Trudeau has downplayed talk of an election, arguing that his focus is on the pandemic and overseeing a rollout of vaccinations.

Ms Brock said signs point in the direction of a spring vote, but that could be reversed, especially if the roll-out of vaccinations in Canada faces further delays and lags well behind the US, UK and other Group of Nations countries. Seven.

A poll published Friday by the Angus Reid Institute indicated that public approval of the government’s vaccine rollout plan plunged sharply to 45% in January, from 58% in the previous month. Still, Shachi Kurl, the institute’s president, said the frustration of vaccination shouldn’t weigh on Mr. Trudeau’s popularity just yet.

Write to Paul Vieira at [email protected]